What Data Do I Use?

First, what is “CRM data?”

According to Dave Helmreich, COO of LiveIntent, CRM data has “traditionally been what marketers and advertisers hold as first-party data. This includes things such as email addresses, phone numbers (which are hashed or anonymized for third-party use), marketing activity, and more.”

Once you secure access to the records you want to use, you have to make sure they’re accurate in order for them to be useful.

“Some retailers have their data in-house, some use a third-party marketing services provider, and some don’t even know what they can access. It requires a deep relationship” between the marketer and the data providers “to understand accessibility and where to activate it,” says Dave.

Aruna Paramasivam, Head of Audience Partnerships at MediaMath, tells us, “not having a high quality CRM file can be a big pitfall. We recommend that customers pre-scrub their CRM files to ensure that the offline data is as accurate as possible.”

After all, you wouldn’t want to incorporate all these helpful audience insights based on bad data.

Cleanse your data sets for duplicates, completeness, and ensure you understand the structure of your data for the best results.

What’s the Goal?

Both of our experts suggested that once you know what your data is, you need to also know what you want to accomplish.

“Have clear objectives on your campaign goals and how you want to engage with your customers online and then look into the data you have collected and see how to utilize that to meet campaign goals” says Aruna.

Dave takes it even further and suggests that you really ask yourself some tough questions:

“What do you want to accomplish?”

“Do you want to reach people who usually open email?”

“Those who are hyper-engaged?”

“Are you interested in a particular audience segment?”

“Or, are you trying to reach lapsed customers, those with a certain checkout basket size, etc?”

Determining the answers to these key questions will finalize the data sets you use and also inform your creative strategy and budgets.

Cross-Channel Action & Results

At this point, you are ready to figure out the best combination of channels that will accomplish your goals.

As Dave points out, many marketers want to “reach both active and inactive customers where they are paying attention.”

In one example, LiveIntent customer, the UK Association of Online Publishers, hosts an event every year with their mobile-friendly audience. They needed a marketing solution that was consistent to the person, irrespective of device.

It allowed them to do this by leveraging the UK Association of Online Publishers’ CRM data to connect with their 2015 AOP Awards Event attendees outside of their own email marketing communications.

Expanding your reach and building smarter audiences are just a few benefits that CRM retargeting enables, but by using the right best practices, you’ll be able to build a more effective and strategic marketing campaign.